


velveteen

by suzukiblu



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Internalized Dehumanization, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Past Sexual Abuse, Rape Recovery, Self-Esteem Issues, Team as Family, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 22:14:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18903691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzukiblu/pseuds/suzukiblu
Summary: Sitting here with wet skin and Superman’s symbol sticking uncomfortably to his chest and Black Canary’s costume being no distraction at all, Superboy does not feel like something that can be helped.





	velveteen

**Author's Note:**

> Reposting some olllllld YJ fics from back in the season one days. This was written for the yj_anon_meme as a (with-permission) sequel to another anon’s [soul-crushingly awesome fill](https://yj-anon-meme.livejournal.com/689.html?thread=1428401#t1428401); will make muuuch more sense if you read it first. The original fill was written for the prompt _“Dr. Desmond molested Superboy at Cadmus. After all, SB wasn't a REAL boy, and "it" BELONGED to him anyway. Superboy doesn't have the frame of reference to recognize that there was anything wrong with it._
> 
> _Can be about it actually happening, or someone finding out later, or maybe how it affects Superboy's first attempt at dating; anything, so long as this is a premise.”_
> 
> Obviously, both these fics can be considered pretty triggering; read at your own discretion.

M’gann likes movies and TV. She says it’s a good way to learn about humans, and Superboy needs to learn too so today he watches them with her. He’s tired—the dreams were uncomfortable last night, he misses G-gnome dreams even more than usual—but M’gann made popcorn with butter and cayenne pepper in it and sugar-sweet iced tea to drink and that makes him . . . he’s less uncomfortable, at least. 

He thinks she knows he doesn’t feel well, but he isn’t . . . M’gann is three-dimensional, of course; of course she would see through him. He thinks she is trying to make him feel better and it’s awkward and strange because he isn’t _real_ , he won’t get better than that. He wants to but becoming real takes a long time, becoming not a toy—not a _weapon_ —it takes a long time. A long time of being loved, but Superboy is . . . he is not real enough yet, it still hurts, and the story said it could, sometimes, but . . . 

Being hurt in a fight is one thing. Being hurt by loving is different, deeper and more frightening and he doesn’t know who would want to love him that long anyway. Superman does not even want to _look_ at him, he would never do it, and his teammates . . . he doesn’t want his teammates to, even if they could, although it’s hard to understand the source of that desire. He still isn’t sure if Red Tornado is real yet himself, but maybe Black Canary could, somehow—or Batman, Superman _said_ Batman had things covered, maybe Batman could do it. Batman can do anything, the way the others talk about him, so maybe Batman wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t mind, very much, and could do it. 

Except Superboy knows there is nothing in him to make that worth it for someone. He still doesn’t know why Desmond bothered, Desmond didn’t even _want_ him to be real. 

. . . something about that thought doesn’t make sense. 

M’gann presses “play” and cheerfully tells Superboy about the clerk at the rental store and how he’d recommended the movie and how good he’d said it was, really _exciting_ , and Superboy watches real people deliberately be _not_ real and feels queasy, and maybe hates them a little. He would give anything to have what they have, to be more than a mediocre shadow of better things, and they’re being shadows on _purpose_. 

He doesn’t understand. 

The pretend-people pretend-talk and pretend-fight and pretend-attack other pretend-people and the movie is boring, and Superboy doesn’t see where the “exciting” is supposed to happen. M’gann scoots closer to him on the couch and he wonders why. To share the popcorn better, he guesses, although they could both already reach fine before. 

A man and a woman come on the screen. They argue. The man hits the woman and she runs away from him but he catches her and loves her. Superboy is upset, for a moment—he always feels uncomfortable watching the people on TV love, they look like it feels so _good_ and it frustrates him to know he’s not enough to feel that for himself—but then he realizes the woman doesn’t look like it feels good at all. She’s crying and screaming _“no, stop, stop!”_ over and over and Superboy remembers . . . he always wanted to yell too but the G-gnomes wouldn’t let him, it wasn’t allowed. 

He doesn’t understand. Is the woman not real? He _thought_ she was, she’s been acting it. She understood things and she wasn’t two-dimensional obvious to anyone else in the movie. But if she’s real, why does being loved hurt her so much? 

Superboy glances over to M’gann, thinking about asking if she knows, and startles at the sight of her. 

He has never seen her look so . . . she looks _horrified_. 

She looks horrified, trembling hands covering her mouth and face six shades paler, and her eyes are wet and bright and she is _shaking_. 

“What is he doing?” she chokes. 

“Loving her,” Superboy replies, confused. He doesn’t understand her reaction. 

“That’s—that’s not how humans do that,” M’gann says, shaking her head fast, still looking horrified. “It’s. It’s not, is it? He’s _hurting_ her.” 

“It only hurts if you’re not real,” he tells her. 

“Not—of _course_ she’s real, she’s right _there_! She’s right there and he’s _hurting_ her, how is that not _real_?!” M’gann shouts, flying up into the air and staring down at him. She looks shocked and angry and aching and her clothes are changing shape and color with her distress and Superboy still doesn’t _understand_. “Someone should be stopping him! Why isn’t someone stopping him from _hurting_ her?!” 

“Why would they? It’s her fault,” Superboy says, frowning in confusion. This is simple, simple enough for even a two-dimensional person to understand: if the woman was real, it wouldn’t hurt. It does, so she’s not. 

M’gann’s face goes even paler, and then her clothes snap into her stealth uniform and she disappears in a sweep of dark blue and Superboy startles. What—why did she do that? 

He starts to say her name, but then he realizes she’s gone, he can’t hear her in the room at all, all he can hear is the two-dimensional woman crying. And—and crying, and crying _still_ , and why is she crying, she’s not a person, why would she _cry_? Toys and weapons don’t . . . toys and weapons don’t cry. 

They don’t. 

Even if he . . . even if he did, he remembers. He remembers crying too. 

The scene changes and Superboy flees the room as fast as M’gann did, suddenly terrified to see what comes next. 

.

.

.

There’s a flash almost too fast to see, but not quite, and Superboy thinks _Superman would see clearly_ and Wally freezes into focus in front of him dressed in his civilian clothes—his real boy clothes—hair and clothes in disarray and . . . and. And that expression, again, Superboy thinks, because something in the quality of the other’s horror makes it exactly the same as M’gann’s this morning. 

“What the _hell_ did you tell M’gann?!” Wally yells. Superboy still doesn’t understand why she was upset, hasn’t seen her since she disappeared from him, and suddenly something in him is . . . 

“Nothing,” he says abruptly, terrified. He wants to grab Wally, Wally is so fast, he could be gone like _that_ like M’gann and maybe . . . and maybe M’gann is not coming back, he doesn’t know what he said but he said _something_ and maybe she will not make popcorn and rent movies for them again, maybe she will not fight beside him on missions again, maybe she will not _see_ him again. 

“‘Nothing’?!” Wally demands, voice rising sharp and painful to Superboy’s ears and in his chest, too loud and too much. “I told her she looked hot and she threw me into a _wall_!” 

“We watched a movie,” Superboy says. “She didn’t like it.” 

“What—are you _high_?!” Wally fumes, his body almost vibrating in a deeper rage than Superboy has ever seen in him, and he is terrified again and wants to say _don’t go don’t go I’m sorry I didn’t MEAN to be wrong, it’s so hard, I just want to be LIKE you I’m sorry I’m not,_ but instead he glares back at him, trying to match that anger, to have something to brace himself against it. He doesn’t understand. He hates not understanding, hates being so flat and _simple_ and so not right, like the rest of the team is a thing and he’s just a picture of a thing, like they’re all the interlocking parts of a perfect machine and he’s a cheap cardboard puzzle piece, flat and incompatible. “She said you told her how humans had sex! She said—hell, why would you _tell_ someone that, even _you_ can’t be that clueless, that’s not _sex_!” 

“. . . ‘sex’?” Superboy repeats, uncertainty strangling his anger, and Wally snarls in incoherent frustration and _blurs_. 

“You made her think I wanted to _hurt_ her!” he roars, and then he’s gone, and so is all the air in the hallway. 

Superboy’s stomach sinks, and his fear rises, and he still doesn’t _understand_. 

.

.

.

Superboy goes to his room and shuts himself in and doesn’t think, except for wishing for the stillness and peace of his pod again, it would be so much better than this, this _hurts_. He hopes that means he is becoming a little more real, but doesn’t think so. 

Right now he thinks he’ll never be real at all. 

The bedroom door opens, and Kaldur looks in at him from the hall with quiet eyes, with an expression that waits for an explanation, and Superboy wants to get angry again, wants the shield of it, but doesn’t have it in himself—not for Kaldur’s quiet, maybe not for anything ever again. The silence is the worst thing he has ever heard and he doesn’t know how to take it, doesn’t know what it _means_ and has to fill it, but that’s what Kaldur wants anyway, isn’t it, and if he fills it maybe Kaldur won’t leave like M’gann and Wally, maybe . . . maybe Kaldur won’t leave. 

“We didn’t talk about reproduction, we talked about loving,” he says, fast, almost fumbling for the words. “There was a woman in the movie who wasn’t real and a man was loving her, and M’gann was upset because she didn’t know why it hurt.” 

“. . . what kind of ‘not real’, Superboy?” Kaldur asks, very quietly, and then Superboy wishes he _would_ go away because . . . 

“Forget it,” he says, and shakes his head fast and turns away. There is another horrible silence that only Kaldur’s heartbeat breaks, and then the door slides back shut. 

It’s a relief, Superboy lies to himself, and tries not to think anymore. 

.

.

.

_Desmond is there and it hurts it hurts hurts hurts, the necklace is on him again and everything is—collar, something in him thinks as his fingers scrabble for purchase or just try to move at all, to fight, Superman would fight, this is not a necklace this is a collar, because Superboy is not a real boy. Superboy is not a person, not a real boy, he belongs to other people, not himself. To Desmond, to Cadmus, to anything but himself, he’s not a real boy and he doesn’t have the RIGHT to fight._

_He isn’t anything. He’s a thing, a tool, a weapon, a toy, what IS velveteen is that what’s inside him, is that what hurts, is that the DNA they stole to make him, the thing in his head that wants to be more than two-dimensional, to be a compatible piece of the machine?_

_He wants to be real, what’s VELVETEEN and why isn’t he real, why is it so hard, why doesn’t Superman make him real, Superman should, Superman COULD Superman could do anything he wanted to but Desmond didn’t want him to be real and neither does Superman, neither does anyone, and he’s shabby and loose in the joints and his eyes are dropping out and he’s ugly, he’s so ugly of course he’s ugly he doesn’t UNDERSTAND and all the hurting didn’t make him real at all, it never will. He is sharp edges and carefully kept and he will break, he is brittle, they will wind his springs too tight and SNAP—that will be the end of him, he will NEVER be real._

_But he wants to be._

“Wally and M’gann are sorry, you know,” Robin murmurs from the other side of the door, so subdued and so unlike himself, and Superboy jerks awake and feels the springs inside him threaten to snap. “They didn’t know.” 

Why should they be sorry, Superboy wonders, staring at the wall; _he_ was the one who didn’t know, who did something wrong, he is the one who is flat and mismatched and not real and he upset M’gann and made Wally angry and disappointed Kaldur and made Robin sound like this—and he wasn’t real enough, isn’t real enough, Desmond didn’t make him real didn’t _want_ him to be real and no one loves him here, he is a lost toy like in M’gann’s movies with the dolls, the stupid space ranger who thought he was a hero, didn’t know better, stupid stupid _toy_ that’s all you _are_ , you’re just for other people, you’re not your own. He should’ve been like the other one, the cowboy, he should’ve known his place and stayed in his pod and never, ever tried to be anything more than that. 

Robin stands outside the door for a long time, waiting for an answer, but never comes in. 

Superboy could get up and open the door, or could at least respond, but never does. 

.

.

.

Artemis breezes in like she owns the world and tosses him a bag of teriyaki jerky and a can of soda, and Superboy stares at her. It’s not the behavior he expected after he did . . . whatever he did, after the way all the others reacted—but he _knows_ she knows about it, that he’s wrong, that he did something. Her movements are too deliberate to not know; her heart rate’s different, her eyes more attentive, more assessing. 

“M’gann said she thought you hadn’t eaten yet,” she says easily, as if she’s not watching him like he’s a stranger, and then turns on her heel and—

“Don’t leave,” Superboy blurts, and Artemis glances back at him with an expression that makes no sense at all. His heart sinks, he already knows she’s as good as gone, he did something wrong and none of them will _ever_ be back—

“Alright,” she says, and comes back and hunkers down cross-legged on the floor in front of him, and tilts her head to one side. “What do you want to do?” 

“. . . nothing,” Superboy admits, still a little afraid she’ll leave, a little afraid that his answer will make her. Artemis cocks an eyebrow, and then cracks her neck, quick and jerky. 

“Okay,” she says, and stands back up, and something in him _dies_ , he swears, that’s how it feels—

Artemis grabs his arm, and yanks him to his feet. 

“Let’s spar,” she says, casually, like she owns the world, like it’s nothing. Like she said it last week and the week before, like nothing’s wrong or different at all, and Superboy follows her because right now he would do _anything_ for nothing to be wrong. 

They go to the training room and don’t leave for hours or maybe forever and Superboy doesn’t know why he’s like this, why he feels like this, but he nearly breaks the reinforced floor every time he hits it. Artemis is fast and agile and alert, and her costume is tight and exposes her stomach and her hair is impractically long, and Superboy feels like he should feel something looking but still doesn’t. It didn’t matter with Black Canary and it doesn’t matter with Artemis—objectively she’s attractive, objectively he should respond to her bare stomach and fitted clothes and flashing eyes, but really . . . really it’s just Artemis, and that’s it. 

When he’s trembling, when it’s too much, she grabs him from behind and says, “Time.” 

He freezes the instant before he would’ve reached back, because at “time” you stop, you turn off and step back, but Artemis doesn’t let go. Her arms are locked around his waist in a completely inefficient hold and he doesn’t know why she isn’t—

Oh. 

This isn’t . . . this isn’t a hold. 

.

.

.

Superboy steps out of the showers still irrationally wishing Artemis had come with him, but that’s not decent, Superman would never take a girl into the boys’ locker rooms just because he was . . . just because he was scared. With the water off, he can hear Black Canary outside the locker room, and his heart stutters to a stop again. He is defective, a disloyal weapon and a toy no one really wants, just something they all swap back and forth when they have a use for him, and now he’s upset everyone and maybe . . . 

He’s not a real person. Like the robot inside the robot, he just _looks_ real but if someone crushed him everyone would see he’d just been nothing all along. He’s not a real person, and they probably should’ve just dismantled him from the start, or he should have just been shut away in a toybox, left in his pod, put _someplace_ he couldn’t do these things. 

Maybe Black Canary is going to tell him that they don’t want him, he isn’t working out, he’s not becoming real like he should be. He’s causing problems and Superman doesn’t even _want_ him to be real and it would be bad if his springs broke on a mission, someplace the team was counting on him. Maybe it’s . . . maybe it’s better to just . . . to . . . maybe someone has another niece, like having Artemis instead of Red Arrow: a bulletproof girl with super-strength, one who can actually fly, who’s _already_ real. Who’s a better—a better weapon than him, a better _person_ than him. 

Who love doesn’t hurt. 

Superboy squeezes his eyes shut and tries to breathe. 

He doesn’t want to _go_. 

He gets dressed, he wants to hide, he wants to go back into the cool white blankness of the showers, his pod, but instead he goes out to Black Canary and says the only thing that will come to him. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset everyone.” 

He wants to never wear this shirt again, he wishes he had another, he wishes he had someplace else to go, he wishes he was _real_. 

Black Canary just looks at him not the way she usually looks at him at all, and it’s even worse than Kaldur’s silence. 

“We need to talk,” she says, with a terrible gentleness. He nods, because he doesn’t have a choice anyway, and follows where she leads. They end up sitting down at the end of the hall, and he looks at her low collar and tight stockings and wishes he felt something at the sight of them. He wanted to try, he knows she wants to help, but that only works if there’s something in him that can _be_ helped. 

Sitting here with wet skin and Superman’s symbol sticking uncomfortably to his chest and Black Canary’s costume being no distraction at all, Superboy does not feel like something that can be helped. 

“Tell me about the movie,” Black Canary says. “The part that upset M’gann.” 

“A man was loving a woman who wasn’t real,” Superboy answers, uncomfortable and not even really . . . not even really aware _why_ and feeling strange for not knowing. But he doesn’t know so many things, so what’s one more? 

“What’s loving?” Black Canary asks, and Superboy blinks. Loving is . . . why would she ask that? 

“It’s _loving_ ,” he says, frowning, but she keeps looking at him expectantly and he finds himself fumbling for words again, trying to clarify something he’s sure she already knows, to find the answer she actually _wants_. “When someone takes your clothes off and touches you so you feel good. And you . . . sleep together, after?” He’s not sure about that part. The TV talks about that part a lot and so did his other resources, but Desmond never slept with him, he was the only one who was ever in his pod. 

“Did the woman in the movie feel good?” Black Canary asks, and Superboy shakes his head. 

“It only feels good if you’re real,” he says. 

“And she wasn’t?” Black Canary’s head tips, and Superboy starts to say _of course not,_ but something in her eyes makes him hesitate. 

“. . . was. Was she?” he asks, even knowing she _couldn’t_ have been. Black Canary’s expression softens, and he tries not to cringe at the sight of it. That . . . he doesn’t know what to _do_ with that. 

“Are you?” she asks. His hackles rise, a freakish prickling goes up his spine, and he barely resists the urge to—yell at her? Shut the door? Not talk at all, or beg her not to leave, or—or _anything_ but answer that question, she already knows, everyone knows, he just hates to _say_ it. 

“No,” he manages anyway, because Black Canary’s waiting for an answer, and she closes her eyes and breathes out and sounds like . . . like someone’s _hit_ her. 

“Why not?” she asks, and the world tilts on its axis. 

“. . . what?” Superboy finally gets out. 

“Why aren’t you real, Superboy?” Black Canary is watching him and the way she’s watching him doesn’t make sense and he feels sick and anxious and really, _really_ wishes he were just real already, isn’t it only supposed to hurt _sometimes_? Can’t it? 

“I don’t. I’m not,” he tries, and loses what he’s saying. It’s too many words, too much to define, it’s _real_ , how can he even _define_ it? The thing that makes loving feel good, secret and not-secret names, belonging without having to be _owned_ , being something more than a—more than a toy, better than a weapon. A real rabbit with real legs; a real boy with the right powers. 

Anything not _him_. 

“Who told you that you weren’t?” Black Canary asks, and he wants to shout at her, she doesn’t understand, she’s _always_ been real, she’s always _had_ that. But she wants to help, he tries to remember that, she wanted to help before so that means she still does, maybe? 

Or maybe she just needs to know if he’s no use anymore. 

“Desmond,” he says. There’s nothing else to say, but more words spill out anyway. “He said I—I’m not a person. I’m a weapon. I belong to—I belonged to Cadmus. Now I don’t. Belong.” 

“Do you want something to own you again?” Black Canary asks, and Superboy freezes up at the thought of G-gnomes in his mind, collars around his throat, the blank whiteness of his pod, Desmond’s voice and touch and _voice_. Except doesn’t, exactly; he can’t breathe at the thought but at least he would know how to be, he would know what to expect and _think_ and he would never have to hope for anything more again, he would never have to worry about that. 

“Someone has to,” he manages faintly, dully, his head swimming with terror. “I’ll never be real if someone doesn’t love me.” 

Black Canary looks so angry and so _sad_. 

He really doesn’t understand. 

.

.

.

“Do you know what rape is?” Batman asks later in a neutral, level tone, and at least with him the unnerving tension is just business as usual. It almost helps, except Superboy is out of things that can help. He’s _tired_ , and he doesn’t understand the point of all these questions. He wants to go find M’gann and apologize, find _everyone_ and apologize. 

“Yes,” he says anyway. 

“What is it?” Batman asks in that same neutral tone, which he really should’ve expected. Batman is like that, and Black Canary’s questions were like that too, before she brought him here and went to do . . . something. Superboy’s not sure what something. 

“A crime,” he says. He just wants to answer and go find the others and make sure they aren’t still upset with him, that they still _like_ him. As much as real people can like something not real, anyway. 

“That entails what?” Batman asks, and Superboy opens his mouth to answer and . . . and the answer is not there. He blinks, rapidly, and the feeling is . . . _wrong_. Incomplete. Like he knew or _should_ know but it just isn’t there. 

“I don’t know,” he replies awkwardly. Batman does not look bothered. 

“Do you know what sex is?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Superboy answers, nodding, resisting the urge to try and scratch the sudden itch beneath his skin. 

“What is it?” Batman asks, unsurprisingly. 

“It’s a method of reproduction,” Superboy replies, grateful not to have the gap there again but still uncomfortable. “A way for males to fertilize a female’s eggs.” 

“How does it work?” 

Superboy blinks, and frowns at nothing. 

“. . . I don’t know,” he says, wondering why he doesn’t, feeling that gap _itch_ at him again. That would be important, wouldn’t it, to know how sex worked? Cadmus probably didn’t want him to reproduce but it is common knowledge, isn’t it, it would be _strange_ if he didn’t know it. 

“Do you know why humans have it?” 

“It’s a method of reproduction,” Superboy repeats, frowning, and earns a measuring look that makes his spine prickle again. He doesn’t know what that look means. He’s . . . he thinks he’s _afraid_ of what that look means, although that’s . . . stupid. 

“Do you know why humans love?” Batman asks, and the way he asks it destroys any possible answer Superboy could have, and he just shakes his head mutely. Batman looks at him for a long moment, not measuring at all, and Superboy doesn’t move or breathe or even think. It would be too dangerous, he feels, anything he _did_ would be dangerous right now. 

He thinks. 

“I am going to explain something to you,” Batman says so quietly that Superboy thinks he might not be able to hear him at all if it weren’t for the super-hearing—so quietly, and not at _all_ in that level tone. He wants to be real, and he doesn’t know if this is the moment Batman will give him that or the moment Batman will tell him that will never happen, and right now he doesn’t even know which would be worse. “If you have any questions, ask, no matter how obvious or strange or embarrassing you think they might be. Alright?” 

“Alright,” Superboy says uneasily. 

Batman explains. 

.

.

.

Batman explained. 

Batman explained and Superboy is _sick_ with new knowledge and doesn’t want to be anywhere near anyone but doesn’t have a choice, really, he can’t just go away, where would he even _go_? There’s nowhere he could go. There’s nowhere he _wants_ to go. 

Desmond wanted to control him. Desmond hurt him _to_ control him, to be in control, loving isn't . . . love isn't like that. 

Sex isn't like that. 

Superboy hates this. Superboy hates _breathing_. He just—he—everything is _wrong_ and he was so, so stupid, stupid _toy_ , you will never be real, a real person would've _known_ better a real person would not—a real person—

Someone real would've fought, he thinks. Someone real would've been stronger, smarter, at least understood what was _happening_. 

He understands now. Not that it's any use, not that it matters, now. It never mattered, the G-gnomes made him obey, Desmond put a collar on him, made him _weak_ , made him . . . made him weak. Desmond always wanted him weak, except for physically, except for when he wanted him to tear things apart for him. 

He was supposed to be weak. He was supposed to be _nothing_ , a body and not a person, a thing, never ever _ever_ a real boy, just a weapon, just a—just a—

He doesn't cry. He doesn't have the right, he isn't real enough to cry, he _doesn't_ , he doesn't so he _won't_ , he won't do that, he won't give that up. He's already . . . he's had so many things _taken_ , already, things he didn't even know were special or important or anything, things real people just _have_. Sex and . . . and love, and names, and homes and families and _parents_ , not just unwilling genetic donors who won't look them in the eye or teachers who have more important students, not . . . 

Superboy doesn't cry. Super _man_ wouldn't cry, he tells himself, angrily, although Superman would never have let any of those things happen to him anyway; no one would ever be able to hurt Superman like that, no one would ever be able to make him— _do_ things like that. 

Superboy remembers the dream, the one where Superman was the one loving— _hurting_ him and he’s so ashamed of that dream, Superman wouldn’t do that. Superman is better than that, he is _good_. He . . . Superman doesn't want to control people, he doesn't hurt people to keep them in line, he doesn't do things like _that_. Superman would never do _anything_ like that. 

It's not the same. It's not the same at all, it's not _right_ that he dreamed that, just more proof that he's not . . . that _he_ isn't right. That he won't ever be. 

Everyone else knew better. Even _M'gann_ knew better, instantly, instinctively, without understanding how humans worked at all. 

Anyone real would have known better. 

The punching bag splits, rocking back on its already malformed frame, and Superboy's face crumples and he drops into a crouch and covers his head with his hands and _despises_ himself. He isn't real. He will _never_ be. 

So why does everything keep _hurting_ , if all that hurting will never make him real? 

What's the point? 

“Perhaps we should invest in a higher level of training equipment,” Red Tornado observes dispassionately as he approaches. Anyone else, Superboy would flee, but Red Tornado doesn't even have real thoughts—M'gann can't read his mind, he's not a person. Someone built him, just like someone built Superboy; they just made him out of wires and metal instead of flesh and blood. 

At least they'd probably designed him themselves, Superboy thinks bitterly, and he'd never had to stand face to face with the first and better version he'd been built from the stolen blueprints of and be found lacking. 

“Batman requested that I assess your condition,” Red Tornado says. Superboy stands, because he's too ruined to do anything but obey, and Red Tornado . . . he _assumes_ Red Tornado looks him over, but there's no real way to tell. Red Tornado has no physical reactions to judge, no moving eyes or tilting head; he is impossible to read. 

Superboy isn't any good at reading even real people, much less other fake ones. He misses the toybox, the genomorphs who he could understand the slightest gesture of without effort—every shift of muscle, change in posture, motion made, those all made _sense_ to him in a way real people don't. Can't. 

“Do you have anything to report?” Red Tornado prompts, which is the only reason Superboy realizes he is expected to say anything at all. 

“I'm tired,” he says. 

“Perhaps if you had not destroyed _all_ the gym equipment, you would have more energy remaining,” Red Tornado says. If someone else said it, Superboy would wonder if he was supposed to smile or be angry, but it's Red Tornado so he doesn't bother with either. 

“So what?” he asks. “It's just things. People can replace things.” 

“Usually,” Red Tornado says, and it sounds like he's agreeing but doesn't really, and then Superboy _is_ angry, but mostly just . . . mostly it hurts. Mostly _everything_ hurts. 

“All the time!” he snaps, teeth baring, gritting, eyebrows furrowing. “They're just _things_ , anyone can make a new one! They can make _better_ ones, ones that don't—ones that aren't _difficult_.” 

“Usually,” Red Tornado says in that exact same tone, like he's just playing back a recording, and Superboy would hate him but Red Tornado isn't real enough to hate, _he's_ not real enough to hate, it's all . . . it's not . . . 

“It isn't _fair_!” he roars as he slams the broken punching bag's reinforced supports down to the ground, the twisting metal making a horrible sound like a scream, but not a real scream, a _thing's_ scream, if a thing was allowed to scream, if it didn't have to—“He made them keep me quiet, why should I have to be _quiet_?! He made them keep me from _fighting_! I know I'm not real but I'm still a _weapon_ , aren't I, he wouldn't even let me be _that_!” 

That fast he's out of words and out of air—why should he be, Superman wouldn't be, not that easy—and _aching_ for something he doesn't even know, and there is still no sign of a real response in Red Tornado at all. It hurts. 

It all hurts, but it still won't get him any closer to where he wants to be. 

“How odd,” Red Tornado says at length, after seeming to realize he's done, that he doesn't have anything more, and Superboy feels small and miserable and wraps his arms around himself and wants—foolish things, too many things, _stupid_ things he is not real he cannot have those—“That seems like quite a lot of effort to convince something that it is what it should naturally know itself to be.” 

“What?” Superboy asks, blinking in confusion and dropping his arms. 

“I mean that Dr. Desmond appears to have gone to quite a lot of effort to make it clear to you that you are not a real being,” Red Tornado clarifies. 

“I'm not,” Superboy says, automatic. 

“If you know that, why did he bother telling you?” Red Tornado asks, and Superboy frowns. He knows that _because_ Desmond . . . told . . . 

Wait. 

His eyes widen, just slightly, and Red Tornado keeps looking at him without looking, if he had eyes they dropped out long ago—not a real person, except then where did his eyes and hair go, did someone love them off or were they never there to love at all, and is he shabby or are his springs going to break? And they're just fake people looking at each other, fake and not real at all, except Red Tornado makes decisions about what he does and doesn't want to do, except no one _orders_ Red Tornado, they just ask, except . . . 

“I know because he told me,” Superboy says. He feels strange, suddenly, weird and hollowed-out and dizzy and _aching_ in places he didn't know could hurt, and Red Tornado is still just looking at him with loved-out eyes. 

“I see,” he says. “He would know, of course. Like he knew you were his weapon.” 

Superboy looks down at the destroyed punching bag at his feet, around at the damaged gym, at Red Tornado's empty face, at nothing and _everything_ , and isn't sure what to think. _Real rabbit,_ something in him says, _a real rabbit with real legs, a real boy with the right powers, do you still need wound up, did you EVER need wound up, will your springs break if they play with you too hard, are they playing with you at all? Does it HURT enough yet?_

_Does it have to hurt at all?_

“Oh,” he says. 

.

.

.

Superboy leaves what's left of the gym. He could go to his room, or maybe outside, but his room is just another version of his pod and all he _really_ wants from the outside is to be able . . . he wants to _fly_ , the G-gnome memories telling him that he should be able to a painful clutch inside. He would go so high right now, he would forget _everything_ right now. 

But he can't, so instead he walks into the kitchen where M’gann and Wally are up to their elbows in cookie dough and when M’gann senses him she drops a whole mixing bowl’s worth and flies to him and stops just before she’d touch him, hovering effortlessly in the air like a pinned butterfly if that even makes sense. Superboy is too tired for anything to make sense. She can fly, he can't fly, loving isn't what he thought it was, and even if everything is different now it's not actually any different at all. 

He doesn't want anything else to change. 

Wally catches the mixing bowl before it hits the floor and brings it over with him, catching up to M'gann in less than a heartbeat. He looks guilty and upset, not as much as M’gann but upset enough, and the back of Superboy’s skull itches. He didn’t mean to upset them again, he just—didn’t want to be shut up anymore. Or did. Or . . . or he’s not sure. 

“We're sorry for yelling at you, Superboy,” M’gann says in a small voice, and Wally nods empathically, and then Superboy realizes they’re upset with _themselves_. Not because of him, but _for_ him. 

It’s . . . it’s uncomfortable, and it itches worse. 

M’gann sits him down at the counter and Wally zips through portioning out the cookie dough onto trays while she checks the oven, and Superboy watches them and listens to “no, that’s too big, Wally” and “but bigger cookies are _better_!” and “they’ll get stuck together!” and feels misplaced, and more comfortable for it. He doesn’t know how to make cookies, doesn’t know how M’gann knows they’re too big or that they’ll stick together, that’s not a thing the G-gnomes taught him, that's not flying: that’s a _real_ thing, something outside the dream, something the lab can’t touch. Something he could do if he wanted to, and something that can’t be bad, no matter what. 

The cookies go in the oven and M’gann sets the timer, fretting, and Wally checks the recipe and _eyes_ the timer, and then resets it. 

“You so don’t get Hindu-Arabic numerals yet, do you,” he says. “We are _totally_ sitting down and having math class the next time we bake. Also _conversions_ class.” Superboy knows what Hindu-Arabic numerals are and how to do conversions, but not how to make M’gann’s face brighten like that. 

“You can _bake_ , Wally?” she asks delightedly. 

“’Course I can, baking is the science of the culinary world, hot stuff,” Wally replies cheerfully, and the cookies go in the oven and they clean up and Superboy likes the smell of the cookies baking, all melting chocolate and warm sugary dough, quiet and peaceful and something that never, ever happened in Cadmus, something that never _could_. Like M’gann and Wally never could, laughing back and forth and taking turns with the dishes. 

He hasn’t seen them get along this well before—not that they ever got along badly, really, but they’re talking _to_ each other, not just at—and wonders what happened. 

Kaldur comes in quietly and sits down beside Superboy, and a little later Robin appears on top of the fridge out of almost-nowhere, hogging the leftover chocolate chips and jeering down at Wally when he protests. 

“Too slow, KF!” he mocks, popping the last handful into his mouth with a smug laugh, and Wally throws flour at him, and Robin throws the empty bag back, and that's normal, Superboy thinks as he watches them, that's not different at all, and neither is Artemis slinking in and giving them an annoyed look as she takes the seat on Superboy's other side. 

“Do you two ever shut up? I could hear you all the way down the _hall_ ,” she says in exasperation. Her elbow is against Superboy's, and he isn't sure if he likes the point of contact but doesn't want it gone either. Kaldur is still close on his other side, not touching but not far away, and the back of Superboy's neck prickles between them. He wouldn't be able to get up without brushing against one or the other of them. 

He thinks about his pod, white and sterile and _close_ , and this . . . this is so much better. 

The timer goes off, M'gann grabs the cookies out of the oven with a quick telekinetic gesture, and Wally has the cooling racks on the counter before she's even closed the oven. Superboy watches the cookies roll through the air and settle onto the racks, and M'gann smiles at him. 

“You can have one now if you want, Superboy, you don't have to wait for the rest of us,” she encourages. 

“Hey, if I swallow them fast enough they _can't_ burn me,” Wally says reasonably, swiping a cookie off the rack. 

“You also can't _taste_ them,” Artemis points out dryly, and Wally hesitates with a slightly wounded expression, and then yelps and drops the cookie—he paused too long, the heat caught up. 

Superboy catches the dropped cookie and takes a careful bite. It's warm and stickysoft and nothing that Cadmus could ever, ever have given him—he didn't know what cookies tasted like, before M'gann started making them. A weapon would never need to know that, but a real boy would've known already. 

He thinks. 

But he knows what cookies taste like now, and he knows what loving is and isn't, and even if he didn't . . . even if he didn't, someone would tell him. 

_Am I real yet,_ Superboy wonders as he looks at the rest of them, _is this what real feels like?_ Is real right _here_ , now, this thing he is when he's with people who . . . with people who care? 

“Is it good?” M'gann asks, a little more anxiously than usual, a little more nervously, but trying very hard to smile like nothing's wrong, or maybe even like everything's okay. Superboy looks at the cookie, looks at _her_ and the others, all of them looking back at him like he's something—some _one_ worth the scrutiny, as if he's more than just flat cardboard or a storybook page, and tries to decide if this makes him different. If he's ever been different at all; if it matters either way. 

“It's good,” he says, and pops the last bite into his mouth. M'gann lights up—brightens, like he thought he didn't know how to make her do—and Wally grins, and Kaldur smiles a little and Robin cracks some kind of joke and Artemis smirks around a comeback and Superboy . . . 

M'gann is smiling, lit up and bright, and Superboy doesn't feel shabby or loose in the joints or even like a wound-too-tight spring. But he is all one piece, he thinks, he is not real, he has the wrong powers and he is flat and so easy to understand and so bad at understanding for himself, a weapon and a toy and something to be collared. Not _real_. 

But he's not really thinking that. It's all just echoes of someone else's voice, they just don't _sound_ like echoes because he was tricked into repeating them, tricked into making them sound like his own thoughts. 

And they're not his own thoughts. They're just lies someone told him. 

Superboy thinks about loving, what Batman said it actually was, what Batman said it _could_ be in that quiet, strange voice he's never heard from him before, and what the real people deliberately being not real on the television say about it, and what the sources he looked up online said, and about being a toy and being owned and being _your_ own and . . . and . . . 

“Would you like another cookie, Superboy?” M'gann asks, smile shy and bright as she floats a few over in offering, and Superboy takes one and takes a bite around a murmured thank you and the others are still laughing/talking/bickering in the background, being three-dimensional and unfathomable but not that unfathomable, actually, if he concentrates. And then he remembers the end of that book, the one that talked the most about being real and how love made it happen. 

_"I've brought you a new playfellow," the Fairy said. "You must be very kind to him and teach him all he needs to know in Rabbit-land, for he is going to live with you for ever and ever!"_

He wonders how he ever thought anything else could've made him real. 

.

.

.

“I spoke to Black Canary,” a crushingly familiar voice murmurs from his bedroom doorway that night, and Superboy tries not to stiffen but can’t help it. He was weak, automatic instinct snaps at him; he was weak and not real enough so it’s his fault so why are the adults all _talking_ about it so much? 

Except it’s not about being real. Or weak. What Desmond did with hands and collars and lies has nothing to do with either of those things. 

“They said it wasn’t my fault,” Superboy says shortly, defensively, and Superman is the _last_ person he ever wanted to have to defend himself from but . . . but things still hurt inside, around Superman, even if the dream was wrong. Even if he's more than an imperfect copy and even if there's nothing wrong with the powers he has. Whatever they are they're _his_. He's his. He's—

“It’s not,” Superman agrees, and Superboy’s thoughts crash to a screaming halt and his chest goes tight and his throat locks up and he just _stares_ , because . . . because Superman just _agreed_ with him. Superman has _never_ agreed with him. 

And he knows it shouldn't matter, not really, but it feels . . . truer, when Superman says it. 

Like something he can believe. 

“Really?” he asks, too weakly and too stupid-quiet, and swallows hard like it'll take the words back. He didn't mean to sound like that, and he doesn't want to base so much of himself on what another person says. Not anymore, and not again. 

But . . . it's _Superman_. 

And Superman . . . he does not soften. He does not look more sympathetic or more concerned or kinder. 

He already looks all those things. 

“Yes,” Superman says, and sits down carefully on the bed beside him and _looks_ at him, looks at him like he's _seeing_ , and Superboy's chest seizes up again. It's awkward, and painful, but that's okay because it's _Superman_. “Is there . . . anything you need to talk about? Or would like to?” 

“Anything?” Superboy asks, swallowing again, feeling wound tight, feeling shabby and loved. 

“Anything,” Superman confirms with a nod, and it even sounds like a promise. “Cadmus or your powers, or even just your favorite book or movie.” 

“. . . there's one book I like,” Superboy says slowly, watching the other out of the corner of his eye, and Superman waits to hear what he has to say. Suddenly whatever's inside him that was wishing to be more than two-dimensional—Superboy doesn't know what it is, velveteen or stolen DNA or a compatible piece of the machine or even just a cardboard imitation—suddenly that whatever that's inside him wishing for better things _aches_. 

Superboy doesn't care, though. 

Real people don't mind being hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://suzukiblu.tumblr.com/)


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